


Dick Grayson Head Canons

by Ferith12



Category: DCU
Genre: Dick Grayson is a Police Officer, Food, Gen, It too will catch on, Officer Grayson, Omnilingual!Dick Grayson, TCK!Dick Grayson, Though that's sort of simplistic, head canons, this tag will catch on I swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 16:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8063308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: What it says.  The emphasis is on the head.  Some of these might be in direct disagreement with actual canon.





	1. Chapter 1

1\. Dick Grayson is quatrilingual. From infancy he learned to speak Romani, Russian, Croatian and French, and he's equally fluent in all of them.

2\. Dick has two super powers: Puppy Dog Eyes and language acquisition. By the age of eight he was fluent in over a dozen languages.

3\. Before coming to Gotham, Dick never learned to speak English. He never happened to meet a native English speaker and at some point someone told him that he would _have_ to learn English because everyone learned English and it was how people who didn't know each others' native languages communicated. Dick's five-year-old self took this as a challenge, deciding to learn every language in the world _except_ English. Problem solved without giving in to those pesky have tos. (Later Dick found himself in America with no one to teach him English. Fortunately he found some Russian speakers. Unfortunately they were part of a gang.


	2. Chapter 2

4\. Right after the his parents died there were two people to catch Dick amid the dark and the chaos. Bruce was the one who stared at him with eyes so so full of sadness Dick thought he would drown, and spoke to him gently in accented french about loss and pain and understanding.  But it was Captain Gordon who brought order to the chaos charging around him.  It was Captain Gordon who introduced himself to Dick in words the boy couldn't understand, but which bled genuine honesty in such a way that they pulled him back to reality.  It was Captain Gordon who gave him a small, reassuring smile that made Dick think maybe, someday, he would be okay.

5\.  When Dick followed the bat signal to find someone to help him find his family's murderer, he was looking for Captain Gordon.  (Not that he wasn't glad when Batman decided to help to.)

6\.  Dick is almost as big a Jim Gordon fanboy as he is a Superman one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is especially non-canon, even anti-canon

7\.  Nightwing does not kill.  He never has and never will.  Nightwing is a hero.  Heroes are looked up to, heroes must exemplify perfection, they must find a way to save everyone, villain included.  Nightwing is a vigilante.  He works outside of the law, no one asked him to put insert himself into any given situation, he goes on purpose knowing that things could get violent so he can't even claim self defense.  If he kills he is no different from the murderers he tries to stop.

8\.  Officer Grayson is known for his almost miraculous skill at deescalating any situation.  His creative use of non lethal force are almost legendary.  But he will not hesitate to take lethal action if necessary.  Because hesitation costs innocent lives, and that is one thing Dick Grayson is NEVER willing to risk.

9\.  When Jason Todd first comes back, Dick has nightmares.  He has nightmares of the Red Hood coming to Bludhaven, murdering any criminal he comes across (and who isn't a criminal in Bludhaven? You almost have to be to survive).  He has dreams in which he kills his little brother.  He has dreams in which he hesitates.


	4. Chapter 4

10\.  As a kid, Dick ate fresh cooked meals made entirely from scratch (because food is _so_ much cheaper if you make it yourself, especially if you can buy stuff in bulk to feed a whole circus) or left over circus vendor junk that may or may not have dropped on the ground at some point.  There was no in between.

11\.  The exception was cereal.  Cereal was a sort of celebratory food because it was (comparatively) expensive, and (definitely) unhealthy and was usually eaten the morning after the last performance when everyone was too exhausted and too busy packing up to make breakfast.  It was a we did good, let's treat ourselves food, and it was a well, that's over food.  It was a goodbye food.


	5. Chapter 5

12\.  When Dick says "When I was little" or "When I was a kid" he's talking about something pre Fall 100% of the time.  If he's talking about the period between eight years old and adulthood he'll say "When I was younger" or the age he was at the time.  He does this even when he's, like, nine years old and tiny.

13\.  It's not like he put being a child behind him when his parents died or anything angsty-dramatic like that.  He was still definitely a kid after his parents' death.  It's just that the circus was his  _childhood._

14\.  Dick has countless stories from when "When I was little" each more improbable than the last.  His friends and family wouldn't believe it's possible to even do all this stuff in eight years.  But then it's Dick, so.  Who knows?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I am shamelessly projecting myself onto Dick here. But it really, really works, and it's my headcanon for him, so.


	6. Chapter 6

 15. When he was little, Dick was something of a collector of idioms and sayings.  Sometimes he used them correctly.  Most of the time he mixed them together, made them up and used them in the wrong language.

16\. When he became Robin, it became a sort of gimmick of his, both because Dick had always had a love for language and playing fast and loose with its rules, and because if he established himself as someone who purposefully mixed up idioms and used made-up words, it wouldn't tip anyone off that English was not his first language if he actually misspoke.

17.  Of course he continued this the rest of his life.  When Dick was Batman and Damian was Robin he didn't really think about the fact that Damian was also not a native English speaker, and had never been taught slang phrases.  The first time someone called Damian out for demanding they not decimate the shrubbery, Dick didn't know whether to feel guilty or proud.


End file.
